Calafia
Calafia, or Califia, is the fictional queen of the island of California, first introduced by 16th century poet Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in his epic novel of chivalry, Las sergas de Esplandián, written around 1510. She is the namesake of the California region encompassing the U.S. state of California and the Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur.
In the novel, Calafia is a pagan warrior queen who ruled over a kingdom of Black women living on the Island of California. Calafia is convinced to raise an army of women warriors and sail away from California with a large flock of trained griffins so that she can join a Muslim battle against Christians who are defending Constantinople. In the siege, the griffins harm enemy and friendly forces, so they are withdrawn. Calafia and her ally Radiaro fight in single combat against the Christian leaders, a king and his son the knight Esplandián. Calafia is bested and taken prisoner, and she converts to Christianity. She marries a cousin of Esplandián and returns with the remainder of her army to California for further adventures.
The name of Calafia was likely formed from the Arabic word khalifa that is known as caliph in English and califa in Spanish. Similarly, the name of Calafia's realm, California, likely originated from the same root, fabricated by the author to remind the 16th century Spanish reader of the reconquista, a centuries-long fight between Christian Iberians and Muslim Arabs that had recently concluded in Spain. The character of Calafia is used by Rodríguez de Montalvo to portray the superiority of chivalry in which the attractive virgin queen is conquered, converted to Christian beliefs, and married off. The book was very popular for many decades—Hernán Cortés read it—and it was selected by author Miguel de Cervantes as the first of many popular and presumed-harmful books to be burnt by characters in his famous novel Don Quixote.
Calafia has been the subject of modern-day sculpture, paintings, stories, and films; she often figures in the myth of California's origin, symbolizing an untamed and bountiful land prior to European settlement.
Character
In the book The Adventures of Esplandián, after many pages of battles and adventures, the story of Calafia is introduced as a curiosity, an interlude in the narrative. Calafia is introduced as a regal black woman, courageous, strong of limb and large of person, full in the bloom of womanhood, the most beautiful of a long line of queens who ruled over the mythical realm of California. She is said to be "desirous of achieving great things"; she wanted to see the world and plunder a portion of it with superior fighting ability, using her army of women warriors. She commanded a fleet of ships with which she demanded tribute from surrounding lands, and she kept an aerial defense force of griffins, fabulous animals which were native to California, trained to kill any man they found.Calafia meets Radiaro, a Muslim warrior who convinces her that she should join him in retaking Constantinople from the Christian armies holding it. Calafia, in turn, convinces her people to take their ships, weapons, armor, riding beasts, and 500 griffins, and sail with her to Constantinople to fight the Christians, though she has no concept of what it means to be Muslim or Christian. Her subjects arm themselves with weapons and armor made of gold, as there is no other metal in California. They fill their ships with supplies and hasten to sea.
Landing near Constantinople, Calafia meets with other Muslim warrior leaders who were unable to remove King Amadis and his Christian allies from the city, and she tells them all to hold back and watch her manner of combat—she says they will be amazed. The next morning, she and her women warriors mount their "fierce beasts" wearing gold armor "adorned with the most precious stones", advancing to invest the city. Calafia orders the griffins forward and they, hungry from the long sea voyage, fly out and maul the city's defenders. Sating their hunger, the griffins continue to snatch Christian men in their claws and carry them high in air only to drop them to their deaths. The city's defenders cower and hide from the griffins. Seeing this, Calafia passes word to her Muslim allies that they are free to advance and take the city. The griffins, however, cannot tell Muslim from Christian; they can only tell man from woman. The griffins begin snatching Muslim soldiers and carrying them aloft, dropping and killing them. Calafia questions her pagan faith, saying, "O ye idols in whom I believe and worship, what is this which has happened as favorably to my enemies as to my friends?" She orders her woman warriors to take the city's battlements and they fight well, taking many injuries from arrows and quarrels piercing the soft gold metal of their armor. Calafia orders her allies forward to assist the Californians in battle, but the griffins pounce again, killing Muslim men. She directs the griffin trainers to call them off, and the griffins return to roost in the ships.
This inauspicious beginning weighed heavily on Calafia. To restore their honor she directed her forces to fight alongside those of her allies, with the griffins kept in the ships. Terrific battles raged along the city's walls but the attackers were repulsed. Calafia led a picked group of women warriors to attack a city gate, one held by Norandel, the half-brother of King Amadis. Norandel charged out of the gate against Calafia; upon meeting their two lances were broken but the warriors remained standing. They struck at each other with sword and knife, and a general melee ensued, Calafia throwing knights from their horses and taking great blows on her shield. Two more knights charge forward from the city, nobles named Talanque and Maneli, a prince of Ireland. These men nearly swamp Calafia in blows, and she can only be pulled back to friendly forces by her sister Liota who attacks the two knights "like a mad lioness". The day's battle left many dead including 200 of Calafia's women.
The story continues with the arrival of several more Christian princes and their armies. Radiaro and Calafia issue a challenge to two Christian warriors to engage them in single combat for the purpose of deciding the battle. King Amadis and his son Esplandián accept the challenge. The black-skinned warrior woman chosen as messenger tells Calafia that Esplandián is the most handsome and elegant man that has ever existed. Calafia determines that she must see the man herself before engaging him in combat. She stays awake all night wondering whether to wear royal robes or warrior's armor. Deciding in favor of a thick golden toga embroidered with jewels, topped by a golden hood, she rode to meet her enemies, escorted by 2,000 women warriors. After being seated among the Christian kings, she immediately recognized Esplandián from his great beauty, and fell in love with him. She tells him she will meet him on the field of battle and, if they should live, that she wishes to speak further with him. Esplandián considers Calafia an infidel, an abomination of the rightfully subservient position of woman in relation to man, and he makes no response.
The next day, Calafia duels with King Amadis, and Radiaro duels with Esplandián. With Leonorina, his betrothed, looking on, Esplandián masters Radiaro with a flurry of weapon thrusts. Calafia and Amadis trade blows until he disarms her and knocks her helmet off. Both Calafia and Radiaro surrender to the Christians. While being held prisoner, Calafia acknowledges the astonishing beauty of Leonorina, daughter of the Constantinople emperor and the intended bride of Esplandián, and resolves not to interfere with their union. She accepts Christianity as the one true faith, saying, "I have seen the ordered order of your religion, and the great disorder of all others, I have seen that it is clear that the law which you follow must be the truth, while that which we follow is lying and falsehood." She marries Talanque, a large and handsome knight who fought with her outside the city gate; similarly, her sister Liota marries Maneli, Talanque's companion in arms. The women return to California with their husbands to establish a new dynasty complete with both sexes, as a Christian nation. With her new husband in tow, the queen then goes on to "have many amazing adventures, including very large challenges, many battles and victories over great seigniories", with the narrator informing the reader that to recount them all would be "a never ending story."
Etymology
The first voyage of Christopher Columbus in the late 15th century sparked a new interest in the search for "Terrestrial Paradise", a legendary land of ease and riches, with beautiful women wearing gold and pearls. Spanish author Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo drew upon reports from the New World to add interest to his fantasy world of chivalry and battle, of riches, victory, and loss, of an upside-down depiction of traditional sex roles. Around the year 1500 in his novel The Adventures of Esplandián, he writes:The explorer Hernán Cortés and his men were familiar with the book; Cortés quoted it in 1524. As governor of Mexico he sent out an expedition of two ships, one guided by the famous pilot Fortún Ximénez who led a mutiny, killing the expedition's leader, Diego de Becerra, and a number of sailors faithful to Becerra. After the mutiny, Ximénez continued sailing north by northwest and, in early 1534, landed at what is known today as La Paz, Baja California Sur. Ximénez, who reported pearls found, believed the land was a large island. He and his escort of sailors were killed by natives when they went ashore for water. The few remaining sailors brought the ship and its story back to Cortés. There is some dispute whether the land was named at this time—no record exists of Ximénez giving it a name.
In 1535, Cortés led an expedition back to the land, arriving on May 1, 1535, a day known as Santa Cruz de Mayo, and in keeping with methods of contemporary discoverers, he named it Santa Cruz. It is not known who first named the area California but between 1550 and 1556, the name appears three times in reports about Cortés written by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. However, the name California also appears in a 1542 journal kept by explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who used it casually, as if it were already popular. In 1921, California historian Charles E. Chapman theorized that Ximénez named the new land California but the name was not accepted by Cortés because Ximénez was a mutineer who killed Becerra, a kinsman of Cortés. Despite this, the name became the one used popularly by Spaniards, the only name used by non-Spaniard Europeans, and by 1770, the entire Pacific coast controlled by Spain was officially known as California. The Spanish-speaking people who lived there were called Californios.
For many years, the Rodríguez de Montalvo novel languished in obscurity, with no connection known between it and the name of California made by English-speaking American settlers. In 1864, a portion of the original was translated by Edward Everett Hale for The Antiquarian Society, and the story was printed in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. Hale supposed that in inventing the names, Rodríguez de Montalvo held in his mind the Spanish word calif, the term for a leader of the Muslim people. Hale's joint derivation of Calafia and California was accepted by many, then questioned by a few scholars who sought further proof, and offered their own interpretations. George Davidson wrote in 1910 that Hale's theory was the best yet presented, but offered his own addition.
In 1917, Ruth Putnam printed an exhaustive account of the work performed up to that time. She wrote that both Calafia and California most likely came from the Arabic word khalifa which means ruler or leader. The same word in Spanish was califa, easily made into California to stand for "land of the caliph", or Calafia to stand for "female caliph". Putnam discussed Davidson's 1910 theory based on the Greek word kalli but discounted it as exceedingly unlikely, a conclusion that Dora Beale Polk agreed with in 1995, calling the theory "far-fetched". Putnam also wrote that The Song of Roland held a passing mention of a place called Califerne, perhaps named thus because it was the caliph's domain, a place of infidel rebellion. Chapman elaborated on this connection in 1921: "There can be no question but that a learned man like Ordóñez de Montalvo was familiar with the Chanson de Roland ...This derivation of the word 'California' can perhaps never be proved, but it is too plausible—and it may be added too interesting—to be overlooked." Polk characterized this theory as "imaginative speculation", adding that another scholar offered the "interestingly plausible" suggestion that Roland's Califerne is a corruption of the Persian Kar-i-farn, a mythological "mountain of Paradise" where griffins lived.
In 1923, Prosper Boissonnade, Dean of Literature at the University of Poitiers, wrote that a fortified capital city in 11th century Algeria was built and defended by the Beni-Iferne tribe of Berber people. This city was called Kalaa-Iferne or Kal-Iferne by the Arabs, and was certainly known at the time in Spain; today it is the ruins known as Beni Hammad Fort. Boissonnade said the Arab name of this fortress city likely inspired Roland and later Rodríguez de Montalvo, such that Kal-Iferne became first Califerne and then California. John William Templeton describes how Hernán Cortés' expedition in search of California had Africans as a third of his crew, including his second-in-command, Juan Garrido. Templeton says that Calafia is exemplary of a genre of literature from the 14th to the 16th centuries that featured black women as powerful, wealthy and beautiful. Historian Jack Forbes wrote that the Spanish were quite experienced in being ruled by Africans given the Moorish occupation from 710 to 1490.